This is such a strange topic, I'm really not sure just where it belongs, so I'll put it here. I won't make any comments for now, just let others read and comment.

quote:

---

Experiment gives hint of brain's role in out-of-body sensation

By Gareth Cook, Globe Staff, 9/19/2002

A tiny part of the brain behind the right ear can cause out-of-body experiences and could explain the many stories of near-death patients who say they have looked down at their own bodies, a team of Swiss scientists announced yesterday.

While treating a woman with epilepsy, the researchers discovered that every time they applied a mild electrical current to part of the woman's brain she felt as if she were floating near the ceiling, looking down on her own body like a soul freed of its earthly bonds.

The results were published in today's issue of the journal Nature.

Because the experiment was done on only one person, the finding does not definitively explain out-of-body experiences, scientists cautioned.

But the work represents the first time that a precise part of the brain has been linked to the out-of-body sensation, a phenomenon that has inspired talk of a spiritual self that can roam free of the body and, after many accounts of patients "watching" themselves before pulling back from the verge of death, has been seen as evidence of an afterlife. The experiment is also the first time that out-of-body experiences have been repeatedly flipped on and off.

"This does not mean that all out-of-body experiences are related to this area," said Olaf Blanke, a neurologist at Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland and the lead author of the article. But "now they are open to a more hard-science experimental investigation," he said.

The Swiss work is just one example of the inroads neuroscience is now making into topics once considered paranormal. Researchers are also studying the biological basis of presence, the mystical sensation of being near a powerful intelligence, and of synesthesia, in which the senses cross and give the impression of seeing a sound or smelling a color. The research is an indication of the increasing sophistication of the tools of modern neuroscience.

It also represents a scientific change of attitude.

"This is one of those things that 10 or 15 years ago were considered just another crazy phenomenon that scientists wouldn't study," said Christof Koch, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

"Now we can study them and learn something about the brain."

The part of the brain involved in the out-of-body experience is the right angular gyrus, which sits about an inch above and behind the right ear.

That area helps assemble information from the visual system, the balance system, and the somatosensory system, which tells the brain where the body is. The somatosensory system is what allows people to bring their fingers together, even when their eyes are closed.

The Nature paper suggests that a disruption at the right angular gyrus, involved in processing the information from these different systems into a coherent whole, creates an illusion of floating in which one's own body feels and looks distant.

Near-death episodes make up a very small proportion of out-of-body experiences, according to Susan Blackmore, a British psychologist who studied out-of-body experiences for nearly 30 years.

Blackmore has collected many stories of people having an out-of-body experience as they were falling asleep or meditating. Such episodes can also hit at moments of extreme stress, she said.

Blackmore herself became interested in the topic when, sitting with friends when she was an undergraduate at Oxford University, she had an intense out-of-body experience, including visits to France and New York City's Fifth Avenue.

To see whether she had really left her body, she checked the color of her building's roof tiles to see if it matched what she had seen as she felt herself floating over the building. It did not.

Some epileptics have also had sudden feelings of floating or out-of-body experiences related to their disease, said Blanke.

Scientists know little about the roots of those episodes. Wilder Penfield, a pioneering neuroscientist, published a paper in 1955 that described the strange effects of applying electrical currents to the brain: sudden limb twitching, hallucinations, and, in one case, a woman who said she felt as if she had just left her body.

But the work was very crude, said Blackmore, because the instruments available at the time did not allow Penfield to determine the specific area of the brain involved or to replicate the out-of-body effect.

The Swiss discovery is a case of serendipity. Doctors were planning brain surgery to help a woman with severe epilepsy who was not responding to medication.

Before such surgeries, doctors need to be sure which parts of the nearby brain are involved in crucial functions and which parts can be sacrificed to stop the seizures.

To do this, different areas of the brain are stimulated with electrodes, hampering the activity of that area.

With electrical stimulation at one location, Blanke said, the woman described feeling as if she were floating. When the current was increased, she described seeing her own body from the midsection down, as if she were on the ceiling.

"I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk," she said, according to the paper.

The electrode was activated several times, and each time she described leaving her body.

The 43-year-old woman, whose name was not disclosed, could prove to be a pioneer, building a bridge between two stubborn camps: those convinced that out-of-body experiences have a larger spiritual significance and those who dismiss them as frauds.

The new research "holds up some hope that the ultraskeptics will see that there is something interesting happening and the ultra-spiritualists will see that it is something happening in the brain," Blackmore said. "Maybe this will close that awful gap."

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 9/19/2002.

---

[ September 21, 2002, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: Linda S ]

I saw this article on the CNN website. This was interesting because run into so many people go only by what they themselves experience. I can get someone to repeat what the Bible says about death, but many times they still cling to that "vision" that meant so much to them.

I find it common for people who are around those who are near death to have them repeat that the patient sees relatives waiting for them in glory just before expiring.